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User: peter303

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  1. ironical: old caliphate had decent science on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 1

    They invented modern place-numerals, developed (and named) a lot of algebra, supplied names for many of the visible stars. They copied the old Greek philosophers writings and argued how their ideas fit in with The Revelation. I dont recall big conflicts between science and religion then.

  2. Geeks and Nerds not the same on Interviews: David Saltzberg Answers Your Questions About The Big Bang Theory · · Score: 2

    I think nerds understand the deep structure of science play and geeks modulate its surface expression. Thee are nerd things that I would do, like take a vacation to watch a rocket launch, and geek things I would not do, like dress up as a superhero.

  3. no wonder apple dropped 16GB machines on iOS 8 Review · · Score: 1

    Getting too tight with IOS8 in there now

  4. nver seen one offered at Stanford, MIT ... on College Students: Want To Earn More? Take a COBOL Class · · Score: 1

    In the past four decades.

    Generally if you are proficient in a couple languagse, you really dont need to take a course to learn a new language.

  5. I attended school to learn things on Ask Slashdot: Any Place For Liberal Arts Degrees In Tech? · · Score: 1

    Not to get a job. I lingered long, but managed to still save millions from a job.

  6. Edison predicted phonograf revolutionize education on Oculus Rift CEO Says Classrooms of the Future Will Be In VR Goggles · · Score: 1

    Its pretty old hat to say every new media will revolutionize education: phograph, movies, radio, mail order, telvision, internet .... Good old human teacher contact is still major factor after 140 years.

  7. A liberal education includes computing on Harvard's CompSci Intro Course Boasts Record-Breaking Enrollment · · Score: 2

    I dont think it the reason is purely vocational (jobs). Young people know computers run the world and contribute to the human intellectual enterprise. Larry Summers tried to strengthen the S&E requirement for a Harvard degree (he was in my MIT class) and the faculty rebuffed him. MITs required six S&E courses for a degree makes them more liberal (broadly educated) in my opinion than Harvard.

    P.S. Computing is NOT one of the six MIT S&E requirements yet. But it comes up everytime the requirments are reviewed.

  8. did you find this much romance in grad school? on Ask David Saltzberg About Being The Big Bang Theory's Science Advisor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even though the charcters are awkward, they seem to have much more lively social lives than when I was in grad school. The students were almost all male then.

  9. tech not solution to social engineering problem on Could Tech Have Stopped ISIS From Using Our Own Heavy Weapons Against Us? · · Score: 0

    We need leaders who understand the geopolitical situation and can use tools of negotiation. These are social issues, not tech.

  10. my access was censored! on A Horrifying Interactive Map of Global Internet Censorship · · Score: 1

    I thinkit was abd firefox plugin

  11. fossil fuels for another century on Numerous Methane Leaks Found On Atlantic Sea Floor · · Score: 1

    After fracked shale gas runs out in the 2030s, there is a vast amount of methane in mehane-ice in the seafloor. Currently it is too pressurized to easily produce (e.g. Mocondo accident). But when other fossil fuels runlow, industry will try to mine it.

  12. runaway globale warming? on Numerous Methane Leaks Found On Atlantic Sea Floor · · Score: 1

    Methane is the thrid most important greenhouse gas after water and carbon dioxide, currently contributing about 10% of the effect. There are tremendous amounts of methane frozen in permafrost and continental shelf hydrates. The fear is ocean warming cold melt more hyrdrates, release more methane and make it still warmer.

  13. need system to avoid "just OK" POTUS too on Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers · · Score: 1

    The grueling two year primary & fund raising system for electing top US leaders need improvement. The past several winners have been barely OK.

  14. old software is a millstone around your neck on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer? · · Score: 1

    As long as your company sells it, it will come back to haunt you 10, 20 years later. When you are bored as hell with it. Or forgotten everything about it. Hardware changes, OS'es change, and old shit breaks sometimes.

    Perhaps the main remedy is to change compnaies somtimes. Then somoen else fixes your old stuff. Or you fix someone elses old stuff.

  15. coding is only a fraction of business on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer? · · Score: 1

    Its not like kollege where yu write a program, make it work, and then are finished.
    In a business a lot of other thing go on:
    planning
    specifications
    coding
    check into codebase
    TESTING
    WRITING TESTS
    fixing bugs
    tracking bugs in a databse
    selling the idea
    selling the software
    supporting the customer
    managing all the people that do this
    learning new technology
    teaching the new people
    maintaining the computers to some degree

    All this stuff occurs whether you are a single consultant, part of a small startup company, or part of a mega-software company.
    In a small software company you probably have the mode overall hours devoted to coding.
    A single-consultant is probably spending lots of time on non-coding aspects above.
    A large company has specialists handling things like selling and testing. The fraction of everybodies hours devoted to coding may be rather small, less than 20%.

  16. China itself is offshoring manufacturing on Dramatic Shifts In Manufacturing Costs Are Driving Companies To US, Mexico · · Score: 1

    To lower-cost SE Asia and African countries.

  17. kind of like the late 1800s on The First Particle Physics Evidence of Physics Beyond the Standard Model? · · Score: 1

    Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations explain just about everything we observe, except for a "few loose ends" like radiation and finite black-body radiation, etc.

  18. the most common type of identity theft? on Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data · · Score: 1

    The reference claims medical identity theft is the most common type of identity theft. but I dont beleive because there are relatively few cases in news about it compared to fake credit card and account withdrawals. It might be source of the most general identity thefts, due the looseness of medical record keeping.

  19. Re:US NFL aggressively enforces copyright on Posting Soccer Goals On Vine Is Illegal, Say England's Premier League · · Score: 1

    I've heard a number of states have considered or passed these so-called "revenge sex" laws. That allows police/prosecuter to investigate entity that first posted with subpoena power and go after them. A lot of these revenge sex incidents are crimes of passion and the poster isnt covering their tracks as well as a seasoned p0rn ring.

  20. US NFL aggressively enforces copyright on Posting Soccer Goals On Vine Is Illegal, Say England's Premier League · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Woe if you post any significant segement of a US football game.

  21. compilers touted as early form of A.I. on Interviews: Ask Bjarne Stroustrup About Programming and C++ · · Score: 1

    Compiliers allowed you to move from brutal machine-language numbers to language-like or math-like statements; from number to problem-domain concepts. Compilers were complex pattern recognition, rule-base translators that implemented this. I've seen some early ads touting COBOL as programming in "almost English" (har har). As with most soft-A.I. results, once you did it, it wasnt really considered A.I. anymore.

  22. UT Austin outsourced bookstore to Barnes&Noble on Student Bookstores Beware, Amazon Comes To Purdue Campus · · Score: 1

    I presume others had too. UT made there old bookstore a giant souvenor/brand-wear shop.

  23. standard to subpoena "computer logs" on Murder Suspect Asked Siri Where To Hide a Dead Body · · Score: 1

    The includes browser records, google searches, etc. for major crimes. Its didnt quite work for the Newtown killer who trashed is computer and operated under aliases.

  24. flash/disk/tape ratios still stand on Solid State Drives Break the 50 Cents Per GiB Barrier, OCZ ARC 100 Launched · · Score: 2

    Cheapest retail magnetic disks are about 3 cents a gigabyte and a fraction of cent gigabyte for digital tape.

    Unless one is a video hog a terabyte should be enough for anybody. And I'd stream most new content anyways. I only read/watch most stuff once.

  25. Google, Apple attempting similar? on New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One · · Score: 1

    Go, swift were supposed to be more global Internet languages than their predecessors.
    Then too, corporate derived projects arent necesarily as good as a celver grad student project.